Nigel Doughty

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Biographical Information

Nigel Doughty (died in 2012)

"Nigel Edward Doughty was born at Newark-on-Trent, just outside Nottingham, on June 10 1957, to Francis and Mercia Doughty. He went to school at Magnus Church of England School but left after taking his O-levels. He completed an MBA at Cranfield School of Management in 1984, and the same year joined Standard Chartered, where he became a founding member of the bank’s management buy-out unit, working with Dick Hanson.

At the end of the decade the pair left to set up CWB Partners, a joint private equity venture between Standard Chartered and Westdeutsche Landesbank, and then set up Doughty Hanson as an independent firm. Within years it had become one of Europe’s largest venture capital groups.

"The firm aimed to buy specialist businesses valued between £200m and £1bn, and among its acquisitions were Dunlop Standard Aerospace, watchmaker Tag Heuer and the sportswear manufacturer, Umbro. Doughty’s rapidly expanding personal wealth was a measure of the firm’s success. By 2005 The Sunday Times Rich List ranked him 916th, with £52m. Shortly before he died, estimates suggested he had more than doubled that, to around £130m.

"A lifelong Labour supporter, he gave £3.5m to the party over the past seven years, becoming an assistant treasurer and leading its small business taskforce. His initial donation of £250,000 followed a supper with Tony Blair, but with Labour enthusiastically promoting an alternative energy agenda, eyebrows were subsequently raised when it turned out that Doughty Hanson owned LM Glasfiber, the world’s biggest wind turbine manufacturer...

"Nigel Doughty made several donations to Cranfield School of Management to establish the Doughty Centre for Corporate Responsibility... He married first in 1985 Carol Elizabeth Green, with whom he had a daughter and a son, Michael, now a midfielder for Queens Park Rangers. After the marriage was dissolved in 1997 he married, secondly in 2004 Lucy Vasquez, with whom he had two sons."

Affiliations

• Doughty Hanson Charitable Foundation